KFConsole

Project Summary

Design a basic concept for a KFConsole companion app.

My Role

Conducted comparative research to inform design decisions. Created mock-ups for a potential KFConsole companion app.

Scope

Timeline: 1 week

Team: Solo Project

Format: iPhone Application

Note: Since the creation of this project I have been employed by KFC. At the time of creation I was not affiliated with KFC in any way. This was a purely conceptual project.

KFConsole? Is That Real?

I was just a surprised as you are. I assumed the KFConsole was a goof, or some kind of silly marketing joke. A gaming console, shaped like a bucket of chicken, made by the Colonel himself seemed way too crazy to be a real thing. I was floored to find out that something so off the wall was as real as the sun in the sky. KFC is actually manufacturing a gaming console that boasts 4K output, 240 fps, ray tracing, and VR capabilities. Once I found out it was a real thing I decided that something so clearly awesome needed a companion app to match.

The Design Challenge

The design challenge for this project is pretty simple. After learning that the KFConsole was a real, very awesome, thing I decided it would be fun to do a quick mock-up for a companion app. This is mostly a visual design challenge that I decided to undertake as a way to get some more practice doing mobile UI design.

Research

Feature Inventory

The research for this project was a little lighter than usual. As I said before this was mostly a visual project. But all good design decisions need to come from somewhere. You need to do some research and lay some groundwork.

While researching for this app I primarily looked into other gaming companion apps. I put together a feature inventory to see what features were industry standard and what I could potentially do to make the KFConsole app stand out. I found that all but Nintendo had a pretty extensive feature list. Basing my features on the Playstation, Xbox, and Steam apps seemed like the way to go.

Ideate and Sketch

Armed with some ideas it’s time to start sketching things out. I held a one man design studio where I would take 10 minutes and sketch out as many ideas as I could. Then I’d take a few minutes to evaluate my designs and decide what parts from different designs would best fit the design challenge. Then it was back to the drawing board (literally) to do another round of sketches. I did 3 rounds of this “sketch and review” process, picking bits and pieces from multiple sketched ideas until I had a design that I was confident in moving forward with.

Design

Wireframes

With sketches in hand now it was time to really start designing this thing. I wanted to keep the design pretty simple and not too cluttered. It was also important to me that each screen look cohesive but also different from one another so that at a glance you could easily tell which screen you were on. I drew inspiration from Ecommerce apps as well as other gaming console companion apps.

Mock-Ups/Final Deliverables

This is the really fun part. Taking the design and making it pretty. I had a great time really getting into the visual design aspects of this project. I really wanted a chance to make something visually interesting. I curved the bottom nav and included a glowing red light to mimic the design of the KFConsole. I also made attempts to incorporate the KFConsole logo wherever I could. Even the little motion lines coming out of the “Explore” rocket is just the KFConsole logo. I used “Noto Sans” for the body text and “Oswald” for the headers per the KFConsole marketing material.

You may have also noticed that the game art included in the mock-ups is a little different than the original game art. That’s because they were all illustrated by yours truly. I had an absolute blast thinking up KFC/chicken jokes for the game art, and even more fun drawing them.

Conclusion

I had a great time working on this. I really got a chance to exercise my love for visual design. Overall I’m really happy with the end result. I think it’s a simple intuitive design that implements the KFConsole branding. Also, this gave me an excuse to draw the Colonel on a bunch of video game covers so that was pretty great.

Next Steps

Because this project emphasized the visual side more than the research side I would love to create a prototype and do some usability testing to see how users would interact with the design. I would also like to go back and design some of the tertiary screens to really flesh the design out.